SHEM SHELLEY BACKS US INTO A CORNER AGAIN, DEMANDS NEURONS
The Black Matter Brain succinctly picks up where Shem’s nominal relation Mary Shelley left off. The root of science fiction has ever been knitting body parts together, but the specialist nature of today’s operation (only blackened brain matter) leads to a rather hyperfocused and ultra-efficient nova-spitting machine. Hence the 7 possible futures in lieu of the normal 1. It’s interesting how solipsistic the monster brain is, telling many brain-based tales, projecting itself onto everything, not unlike the original Wretch… BRAINS AND THEIR MALFUNCTIONS EVERYWHERE.
Special shout out to the German-heavy Possible Future #5, the most aesthetically satisfying of the lot. I’d like to hear more in the future about the adventures of the Impossibly Miniscule Organ.
This issue also makes HEAVY use of sigils. Each future is granted its own abstract logo, somewhat muted and not far-off from a bland 90s telecom venture.
Even Romonde’s normally detached ravings seem to be participating in cerebellum fever with the invocation of certain “Brain Juncture Vultures…” He also invokes certain spiritualized “Rough Sleepers” which strike me as metaphysical companions to the freakily invoked “Watchers” of the Book of Enoch. Which explains the coin-operated Samaritan Engine nicely.
LOVE-IS-LAND, even at sea.
The issue ends with a rather cryptic observational logorrhoea, something quotidian slipping off as it were, a kind of skin shedding, it definitely does not make sense but does not make no sense. The key is no doubt to be found in one of the massive green covered volumes of perpetually untouched Swedenborgeana available in the corner of every used bookshop on earth. That page and word wherein the insect lay crushed, is the answer.
